Core i7 system with -9073 error

[johndkeene]

So here's an interesting test that I did, which I think helps point out that seek time is maybe the driving factor.

If I use my 100G partition and it's just assigned a drive letter, it seems to work fine. If I mount that partition on a directory on another partition on the same drive, then I get the white noise on playback which I assume is a data starve issue.

I'll try mounting onto a directory on another drive next and retest.

[sharptoupe]

This is interesting.. I've been having the same problem lately.. all of my sessions run off of a devoted 1.5TB caviar black drive. I was thinking the problem could be too much seek time..(seeing how I have 1.2TB free space on this particular drive).. you have seemed to validate that. Please keep us updated on how things are running with your setup.. I might try to partition my drive later today to see if that helps my performance.. thanks.
Matt

[NS3474]

Thanks for this thread, guys. I just set up a new system and got the same problem. Unchecking indexing and compression on my 500G session drive seems to have fixed the issue. (The WinXP optimization tips only specified that this be done to the C drive.)

Anyway, not to hijack this thread, but thanks!

[johndkeene]

Well, with further testing, looks like mounting the partition on any drive as an NTFS directory mount causes the white noise problem. The only reliable way to make the 2T drive work is mount it as a drive letter and partition it smaller. I did my testing with a 100G partition.

I still suspect that seek time more than raw read or write speed is the main issue (and why SSD drives work so well). So, my guess is that for conventional hard drives, bigger will not always be better. You may end up having to partition it to smaller drives to use for recording.

I guess I can't lay things out structurally the way I wanted to. I hate having lots of extra drive letters around. The funny thing is I have enough RAM on my box that I could load the entire session into RAM and still have 10G left over but I guess Pro Tools is still really tied to the hardware. I've never had this much trouble with Ableton Live.

Does anyone know if Pro Tools 9 is "better" with this type of issue (ie, have they improved the efficiency of getting the data on and off the drive?) or is it about the same but with the added benefit of removing the Avid hardware binding?

[The Weed]

With that much RAM, why not try this.

Cheers,

[johndkeene]

Originally Posted by The Weed

With that much RAM, why not try this.

Cheers,

The main reason is then I'd have to remember to copy up and save back every session, every time. I'd probably forget at least once

This isn't a slouch machine, I wouldn't think I'd have to go through so many hoops to get a basic session to play back. I don't have the reverb plugin or the mastering plugin installed yet, and all the sessions are 8-10 stereo tracks. I would think the software would take advantage of more RAM if it's there.

I may go ahead and upgrade to PT9 and compare the results.

[The Weed]

There are options to save the information from the RAM disk to a regular hard drive.

Your extra RAM isn't going to help much since Pro Tools is still a 32 bit program. However, since you have a 64 bit OS the programs aren't fighting for just 4 gb of RAM as they would with a 32 bit OS.

Unfortuantely a powerhouse computer isn't necessarily a compatible with Pro Tools computer, although yours looks okay.

Cheers,